Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative, the third largest dairy cooperative in the country based on milk volume, hosted a workshop on meaningful milk pricing reform in northwest Iowa this week. The session aimed to shed light on the cooperative’s efforts to reform the U.S. milk pricing system through the Federal Milk Marketing Order hearing process and legislatively through the farm bill. American Foods Group sponsored the event. …
Farm Bill discussions are underway, including the future of federal milk pricing. In fact, there is some unfinished business from the previous Farm Bill with consensus among dairy producers and organizations to return the Class I pricing formula to its previous ‘higher of’ method that was changed legislatively to an ‘averaging’ method in the last Farm Bill. That change did not go through a hearing process or a producer referendum. …
American Dairy Coalition, a grassroots dairy farmer-led organization, has been engaging farmers and industry in discussion of the future of milk pricing since 2020. That’s when the unintended consequences of the Class I price formula change, which passed in the last farm bill, became apparent in Federal Milk Marketing Order dysfunction, de-pooling, loss of Class I value and resulted in negative PPDs. …
Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative, one of the largest dairy co-ops in the country, stressed flexibility and fairness today in announcing its priorities for reforming the federal milk pricing system. …
“We are in the midst of a modern-day dairy crisis magnified by a Class I pricing change in the 2018 Farm Bill. This system cannot adapt to market conditions and thus is not fairly compensating our dairy farmers. The formula change is a symptom of larger problems in a system that is confusing, convoluted and difficult to understand. We need to put the power back in the farmers’ hands,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) during the Sept. 15 Senate Ag hearing in the dairy subcommittee she chairs. …
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